Tuesday, March 20, 2012

The Big Shaming Theory

There were a number of good comments on my last post regarding the Big Bang Theory. While I was writing it, there were a whole lot of other themes and subtexts I could have also pointed out with regards to the show (extended adolescence, over the top caricatures of Christians and Christianity, ), but I found the post starting getting disjointed in trying to cover everything...so I deleted whole sections before hitting the publish button.

In the comments, Alte posted a link to a feminist blog entitled Womanist Musings, in which she points out that feminists don't like the show because it had an episodes that had slut shaming combined with racism. (Look it up in the comments of the last post if you really wanna see the piece, I'm not going to hotlink to that misandrist blog) Commenter Sojourner also weighed in:
"...this show does have a perchance for slut shaming."

I actually disagree...I believe TBBT is actually engaging in a bit of "wag the dog" style propagandizing.

First thing to note is that the episode for which the feminist blogger is offended with has Penny expressing regret for sleeping with Raj and how she feels guilty for it. Womanist is offended, but she fails to realize the entire context of that episode is actually promoting her feminist ideology: Penny "puts everything back to the way it was" - i.e. no real consequences for her slutty behavior, and by the next episode, Raj, Penny and Leonard all act as if nothing had ever happened.
Is that REAL "slut shaming?" Note the dialog between Penny and the other female character, Amy, that got Womanist all upset:

Amy: Do you know the story of Catherine the Great?
Penny: No
Amy: She ruled Russia in the 1700's and one night when she was feeling particularly randy she used an intricate system of pulleys to have intimate relations with a horse.
Penny: I'm sorry, what does this have to do with me?
Amy: She engaged in inter-species hanky panky and people still call her great. I'm sure your reputation can survive you shagging a little Indian boy.

Cue laugh track.

Slut shaming? Looks more to me like demonstrating how the female rationalization hamster can explain away slutty behavior. Yet another subversive meme being presented as normalized behavior in the show.

Womanist is all upset that the script writers have Penny expressing feelings of guilt for sleeping with Raj - who is supposed to be Leonard's friend. Sleeping with your boyfriend's friends is slutty behavior. Womanist is upset that the script writers here are calling a spade, a spade.

Real slut shaming by a TV show script writer would involve showing the real consequences of slutty, promiscuous behavior. Usually when a girl sleeps with her boyfriend's friends in real life, the relationship dynamics between the sordid triangle are forever changed. Raj and Leonard would never be friends again, may even fight, and there would no longer be the regular episodes of the entire cast sitting in the living room eating take-out food and hanging out.

But not here...the show carries on, episode after episode, with no real effects from slutty, promiscuous behavior ever depicted realistically.
Womanist fails to identify the real theme of that particular episode: Brave New World Order sexual morality = sex is disconnected from procreation, and is now a meaningless entertainment. Everyone can fuck anyone and no one is supposed to be upset, nor should they let meaningless, promiscuous sex interfere with relationships. She's upset that the script writers would DARE even put in even a half-assed dialog that hints at slut shaming, but fails to see the bigger picture in that the slut shaming referenced is ineffective, LAUGHED OFF, and marginalized by Amy's rationalization - Catherine was a horse fucker, yet she was still considered GREAT!

In other words, the real subtext of the message here is: DON'T LET SLUT SHAMING BOTHER YOU LADIES...others have done far worse and they are still considered historically GREAT!

Feminists like Womanist wants no mention of any kind of judgement for any female's sexual behavior whatsoever. No one EVER should have even the slightest thought for judging any woman, anywhere for her sexual choices. She fails to realize how the very episode she derides, is actually playing a part in promoting the marginalization of slut shaming as a means of constraining female sexuality.

I've been making the rounds with this for a bit; are you all familiar with a book called The Richer Sex? It's a bit of feminist triumphalism about how with women becoming breadwinners, the roles will be reversed and men will be selecting women for their higher incomes and taking care of the children while the high-achieving women pull down the big bucks, among other things. Here is a Huffington Post article summarizing the book's main thesis.

There is a point to my previous post that relates to this. The idea is that with these "changes" taking place, men will be subservient orbiters and women will like it. Hypergamy will disappear, and stuff like what you see on the show will be preferred by women.

I'm skeptical of it, but I'm not quite sure how to argue with it. How do we know hypergamy isn't cultural?

She's upset that the script writers would DARE even put in even a half-assed dialog that hints at slut shaming

Such is the burden of reality deniers.

This reminds me of something Dalrock wrote in his post "Nothing is more subversive than the truth:"

The good news is we don’t need to convert anyone else to be successful. We have an essential advantage; our message happens to be the truth. We don’t need to win the argument. The truth is the truth, whether others believe it or not. Feminists need to convince everyone that their view of the world is correct, or individuals will continue to peel off to follow their own best interest. All we have to do to win is accept the truth, and act in our own best interest.

I've been making the rounds with this for a bit; are you all familiar with a book called The Richer Sex?

...

I'm skeptical of it, but I'm not quite sure how to argue with it. How do we know hypergamy isn't cultural?

Biology; as simple as that.

Your default assumption should be that women are the choosers, men are the competitors - that women seek resources to provide for their children, and pair bond, while men seek out the young and fertile.

An overwhelming imperitive which drove a man to commit to a woman who cheated on him would be genetic suicide.

The situation suggested by that book is laughable, particularly when you consider it's already the case. Women earn a $1.17 for every $1 a man earns (for the same work), and have higher incomes in their early twenties.

If women start paying for dates it's not going to suddenly make men want to commit - we'll still want to play the field. Occasionally we might seek out a wife - somebody who's high income, smart, good looking and still fertile, in which case we'll marry 25 year old Engineering students...

...and then divorce them ten years later, and leave them with the kids. While we pursue a second 25 year old for a second marriage.

Women are the primary beneficiaries of marriage in-and-of-itself; it locks down a man for life to them, provides them resources, gives them the companionship they seek.

Men are only beneficiaries of marriage as an institution. When it's a societal standard, marriage is the only path to nookie.

Companionship? A top-level man - and when women are allowed to sleep around, these are the only ones they'll be sleeping with - can always find a woman who's younger than him for companionship. An aging woman, on the other hand, offers nothing to a new man.

There are some long-term benefits to marriage for men, but in a world of free sex they don't compare to the short-term trade off. Not for 95% of the guys, anyway.

Jeez, can you imagine the world where you get to marry three young girls in a row and then collect the alimony? Which guy wouldn't be doing this?

All you have to do is ask yourself; would you rather go on a cheap date with a hot cheerleader, or an expensive date with a wrinkled crone? Men don't care about fancy restaurants anywhere near as much as women do, nor do we have the biological drive to raise children (this only gets activated in us after the kid is born - for women, they start going nuts in their late twenties).

Hypergamy isn't cultural and men and women aren't easily interchangeable because men don't have a vagina and can't pop out babies.

Any discussion of society and how the sexes relate that doesn't take that profound difference into account is worthless. Female sexuality is by orders of magnitude more powerful than male sexuality, so to make up for that sexuality deficit men did a little thing called build civilization. If she has the sexual power and the higher status, forget it, a man is doomed, and most men will be doomed to a life of disrespect and misery. Feminists and women understand this at least subconsciously but never mention it because they know they got a nice scam going on.

I’ve been saying this so much I know I’m beginning to sound like a broken record. However, it doesn’t change the fact that it’s true. If you wish to see that erroneous articles hypothesis in action, look no further than your closest black Ghetto. Black women are outpacing their male cohorts yet you don’t see men looking to marry women because of their higher earning potential.

"If you wish to see that erroneous articles hypothesis in action, look no further than your closest black Ghetto. Black women are outpacing their male cohorts yet you don’t see men looking to marry women because of their higher earning potential."

The book makes the same mistake as any observation based on a short frame of reference and ignoring surrounding trends. The situation in the Ghetto is unsustainable on a large scale and actually only continues because of resources propping it up from the primary culture. As thing shift in the primary culture to reflect more closely the sub-culture the resources to sustain either are disappearing. The people that have correctly predicted the series of economic bubbles engineered by the government vary in whether hyper-inflation or massive deflation is on the way. All of them, unlike the mainstream, say either way that the sh*t is going to hit the fan. Big/Sugar Daddy government is unworkable in the long run and will collapse. Either we will be living in grass huts under a matriarchy or the current trends will all reverse. Other alternatives tend to be rather bleak.

Also, TBBT isn't even about Betas. That group runs the gamut from Delta to Omega. I watch it with my wife and personally get a chuckle out of how PC it is regarding science and the typical "well ALL smart people know this is the TRUTH about how the world works" jive they sell. The one time one of them showed any manly attitude (and turned Penny on) he immediately flipped it back to Delta.

There is no need to see more evil in BBT than in every common TV soap opera that has been around for ages. In every long term television series people switch partners, fall-in and out of love, their notch count keeps growing.

It is understandable because otherwise the series would have no option to continue they need this constant drama recreation and there are no better ways to do that than by partner switching. But it also happens to brainwash the women watching them that this switching and unstability is normal and even exiting.

I would be cautios to call it a conspiracy (because it is bad to see conspiracy in everything even trough there is a conspiracy) it is just how the TV series need to operate to continue earning money. After all a longer series of 1000 episodes is easier and cheaper to make and easier to secure a stable audience than 10 series of 100 episodes.

This is why suggest for every man living with women to do throw out the TV set and just watch carefully selected movies instead or even better have more sex instead or read books and then discuss them together.